..inline..
TropBob <tropbob at aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010725012033.25895.00001073 at ng-cf1.aol.com...
>> I am looking for references on some creature/animal that has only a
few nerve
> cells in its whole nervous system, and whose full nervous system has
been
> completely understood, and hence whose behavior is completely
understood. If
> there is no such animal, are there any that are close to being fully
> understood?
>> Ideally, the references would be either authoritative to experts, or
readable
> to a larger audience.
suggest aplysia californica.
have a look at the aplysia forum page
http://www.seaslugforum.net/aplycali.htm
kandel page
http://fido.cpmc.columbia.edu/kandel/research/
What you really need is the book Eric wrote:
Kandel,E.R. (1979) Behavioural Biology of Aplysia. San Francisco:
W.H.Freeman&Co.
463pp. that will really be worth buying, though it's shelved in many a
good uni library.
BTW, if you want to know more about crab, try search using " limulus "
and also try search using " Hartline " who did seminal studies, WRT
lateral inhibition.
This'll get you started
http://www.pbrc.hawaii.edu/~danh/HKHartline.html
While you're at it, take a look at the work of Ernst Mach.
If this is of interest, please post back in-- there's lots more I've
references to.
-maxwell
>> I don't know if years ago someone or some article said that the
horseshoe crab
> has nine nerve cells total, the nerves are very large and easy to
study, and
> that the whole interaction of these nine nerves had been fully
analyzed and
> characterized (and hence also the behavior of the crab).
>> In searching libraries and the Internet, I have not found much at
all on the
> horseshoe crab (or on Chelicerata/Merostomata). Grzimek's
"Encyclopedia of
> Animal Life" seemed to have the most material but it still did not
have much.
> These crabs are very ancient, going back to well before dinosaurs.
>> Through a children's book on them I discovered that they have eyes
with about a
> thousand facets. The eye has been studied for line etc detection.
This would
> seem to imply that there are many more than nine nerves in the
creature. Unless
> there is something like a visual array that is not considered part
of the
> nervous system, an array that processes for e.g. lines etc..
>> Thanks for any refs, or for leads, sources, or places to check or
query for
> refs and information.
>> Bob Els